7 ms·

Public performance of a copyrighted work. Unless the officer has a license to play the music for public consumption, it is illegal for him/her to do so.

by jmj42 6y ago

adolph 6y ago
Is it a criminal or civil offense? If the officer is playing the music incidentally as they go about their day, would that be fair use? I wonder if a de-music service would be feasible so that the copyrighted audio within a video would be detected and suppressed without suppressing the video and other noises.
- gpm 6y ago
  Willful infringement of copyright is criminal. Incidental infringement is not (also incidental recording of music would probably not be civil infringement either in my honest and not at all a lawyer opinion).
  - jariel 6y ago
    These are ridiculous arguments, essentially implying that 'playing the radio for yourself' is copyright violation. Obviously, it's not. Maybe uploading a video containing such music is.
    - gpm 6y ago
      Public performance is copyright infringement, playing it to yourself is not, playing it to the live streaming video camera is.
      - jariel 6y ago
        Obviously not. If you are playing music to yourself, and someone films you - you are not infringing - the person filming and uploading is - possibly, though that's more questionable.
        8note 6y ago
        You are infringing if they can hear it. That cases are not pursed is incidental. I imagine it's hard to build a case against the guy blasting his car radio without a recording, and the affected people aren't particularly unhappy with it. If copyright was more like trademarks, and they had to protect it to keep it, you'd see more cases of people playing their music too loud. We'll see the same happen with streaming services as smart TVs get popular. You'll have to pay per viewer as licenses change
        jariel 6y ago
        You are not infringing on anything by playing music to yourself, and it's not a matter of cases being failed to pursued, it's straight up legal to do so in every sense. If there is some random person filming you - then they are infringing - not you.
    - riknos314 6y ago
      To perform or display a work “publicly” means . . . (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times. - Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act
      - jariel 6y ago
        Wonderful, thanks, you've just proven my case. Anyone playing the music to themselves is not playing it where 'a substantial number of persons' can hear it, nor are they projecting in such a manner. If this were the case, then anyone playing music, anywhere would be in violation, which is obviously ridiculous and no, it's not about some odd technicality of the law. It is straight up, 100% legal to play music to yourself. Given that there are millions of instances of people doing this every day, and zero cases of infringement in these scenarios, it would seem both the letter of the law, and case history quite handily demonstrate how crazy the claim is. HN threads descend into a weird distortion field when dealing with hot-button issues such as DRM, policing, NIMBYism, blockchain, privacy etc. -> Someone playing music to themselves (and not filming themselves and putting said video in public) is not infringing on anything. -> Someone filming someone else else playing music, may be infringing by virtue of the fact they are posting the content 'in public'. I don't think it's a matter of 'a difficult case to make' against a person being filed while listening to music to themselves, there is no case. The videographer, yes. Twitch / Youtubers know this as they cannot stream DRM'd music in their streams, but of course, they are directly making said music public, in which case it's a legal problem.
      - aamoyg 6y ago
        They will use the argument that their partner cop in the squad car is a "social acquaintance" or work friend, and that the music was intended for them.
        6y ago
Hnrobert42 6y ago
Are you arguing that playing music is illegal?
- sumthinprofound 6y ago
  it has a chilling effect on a citizen documenting an interaction where the other party has all the power.
- rakoo 6y ago
  Most music is under a copyright that explicitely prevents public diffusion without a license. Unless the music doesn't have such a limitation, or the police have a license, yes, playing music in a public fashion like that is most probably illegal
- LocalH 6y ago
  Are you arguing that the police should be able to play copyrighted music to circumvent the lawful dissemination of recordings of their behavior?
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    Of course not.
- cecilpl2 6y ago
  Intent matters. In some situations, yes, playing music is illegal.
- bialpio 6y ago
  There are definitely cases where playing music violates the license, but I wouldn't call it illegal[1]. Playing music at some business almost certainly is not allowed by default, you'd probably need to get a permission from someone authorized to give you one (i.e. a different license). Playing music in public likely has similar rules. [1] IANAL, etc, etc.
ashtonkem 6y ago
That would be a fantastic way to make them stop. Surely qualified immunity doesn’t cover copyright violations.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mc32 6y ago
Is it a public performance when kids turn up their music and rattle their cars that I can hear it blocks away? If you’re just turning up a broadcast radio station, I don’t think that is public performance.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Try turning up a radio station in a public area of a private business and see how quickly ASCAP reps come out of the woodwork. Now that I think about it, if we could get ASCAP to go after the kids with their rattling cars... Hmmm!
- jchw 6y ago
  If your phone has an FM radio, sure. However Internet radio doesn’t offer the same broadcast exemptions that traditional radio does, so you still need to deal with licensing when it comes to playing internet radio in public. Now on one hand, every day people will find this absurd. However, I am pretty sure it is not a defense that it’s not enforced evenly in all circumstances. A lot of people go 5mph over the speed limit without consequences; means nothing if you’re in court for it. However, if you are acting in bad faith, you can expect people to become more creative with their use of the law against you. The police do this all the time. And I really, really don’t think we need to argue that the police officer here just really wanted to share his taste in music while being uncooperative and has no idea what’s going on. P.S.: IANAL.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Copyright holders often act in bad faith, non-copyright holders as well. We see both all the time on YouTube. Yet people continue to proceed in bad faith without repercussion. I do know lots of small businesses (pop-ups) use streamed media -so do company picnics and so on. It’s a thing. Officially I’m sure ASCAP frowns on this. On the other hand it’s a fruitless pursuit.
    - jchw 6y ago
      It’s obviously up to rights holders to decide what they would like to do. ASCAP is probably largely not interested in policing mundane and mostly personal uses of music in public places; especially a one-off event like a company luncheon, where relevant legal exemptions (at least for broadcast radio) exist. Seems like a case of not much to gain with a bit to lose. However, it might possibly become a different story in this case. Here is a pretty objectionable use of copyrighted music on a small scale. It makes copyright holders look bad because the system they lobbied for could now possibly be used to help corrupt or abusive police officers escape accountability and censor opposition. Ordinarily, a copyright holder taking action against a small scale case like this would seem like a David and Goliath situation, but in this case the “little guy” is not the person playing the music. Acting in bad faith is, of course, one thing, when you are an individual and you are acting against a large conglomerate. It doesn’t justify the action, but the optics of enforcement are not great. Just remember issues like Mike Rowe Soft for example. (P.S.: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...) This case is more complicated because the perceived wrong is not exactly the use of copyrighted music but how copyright systems are being used against a citizen exercising their rights. It remains to be seen what happens, but if this sort of behavior continues I can at least bet on musicians not being very happy to hear when their music is used for this purpose.
jariel 6y ago
It's not a public performance if a cop or anyone else is playing music for themselves. It's ridiculously obvious, otherwise, literally anything with a speaker would practically be banned. The person making a video with the music as part of the content, may be technically subjected to DRM, or rather, when they upload it they will be.
tantalor 6y ago
Just let ASCAP know, they'll get right on it. > But every now and then, a business makes the decision to ignore the legal rights of the music creators that help them make money. We only pursue lawsuits as a last resort after multiple attempts to negotiate with the licensee in question. https://www.ascap.com/help/ascap-licensing/why-ascap-licenses-bars-restaurants-music-venues https://www.ascap.com/help/ascap-licensing/why-ascap-license...
munk-a 6y ago
I think this would be a pretty terrible abuse of that law - it would also be quite non-standard since listening to music on a boombox hasn't been prosecuted AFAIK[1]. Oh as I mentioned in a different comment I think this should be illegal and might already be illegal - but pulling some rando law out of the aether to force the charge isn't a great tactic. Edit: Just to clarify, one of the other reasons I'm skeptical of using copyright law for this is because the intent doesn't match what the officer's intent would be allowing for officers to have a pretty good chance of avoiding any repercussions and because the penalties of sentencing are inappropriate. There are existing legal recourses in most instances for restricting the ability for civilians to record police incidents - if an officer is abusing copyright law to accomplish this silencing then they are likely running afoul of those laws and should be sentenced with breaking those laws since the penalties are more appropriate. 1. I'm going to guess it has happened sometime because racism, but it really shouldn't be. And thankfully a quick googling didn't turn up a litany of results.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > I think this would be a pretty terrible abuse of that law No more or less terrible than automatically removing the video of the officer is. It's the same law! If it's unethical to prevent an officer from playing music it's equally unethical to exploit someone else's enforcement of that law for reasons that have nothing to do with playing music.
- jmj42 6y ago
  Some rando law? Public performance isn't really some random law pulled out of the aether. It's one of the basic tenets of copyright and serves as the basis for the majority of copyright licensing in the U.S. Even the take-down process that the officer is looking to exploit exists because of the the rights holder's right to public performance (an Instagram video is a public performance). That it is illegal (criminal) to willfully perform a copyrighted work in public is well established law and not the least bit random.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    Sorry - I mean random with regard to the intent. The intent isn't to broadcast this music to the world so that dancing can happen - it is to specifically restrict the ability for observers to record the incident. Restricting the ability for observers to record police incidents is already illegal in most circumstances. I think making sure this is attempt to circumvent the law falls under the same laws and comes with the same penalties is important.
hooande 6y ago
If you record me playing a song on my phone and post that on youtube, you're responsible for any copyright infringement, not me. There is no law against playing a song on your phone, even if you're being recorded
8note 6y ago
Nothing says they can't get a piece of work made and licensed, and have an exclusive license to share The license to share tends not to be transitive. They might be doing this improperly for now, but it's not hard to fix. The exclusive license could be found unconstitutional though?

Public performance of a copyrighted work. Unless the officer has a license to play the music for public consumption, it is illegal for him/her to do so.

by jmj42 6y ago

Public performance of a copyrighted work. Unless the officer has a license to play the music for public consumption, it is illegal for him/her to do so.

adolph 6y ago

Is it a criminal or civil offense? If the officer is playing the music incidentally as they go about their day, would that be fair use? I wonder if a de-music service would be feasible so that the copyrighted audio within a video would be detected and suppressed without suppressing the video and other noises.

gpm 6y ago
Willful infringement of copyright is criminal. Incidental infringement is not (also incidental recording of music would probably not be civil infringement either in my honest and not at all a lawyer opinion).
- jariel 6y ago
  These are ridiculous arguments, essentially implying that 'playing the radio for yourself' is copyright violation. Obviously, it's not. Maybe uploading a video containing such music is.
  - gpm 6y ago
    Public performance is copyright infringement, playing it to yourself is not, playing it to the live streaming video camera is.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Obviously not. If you are playing music to yourself, and someone films you - you are not infringing - the person filming and uploading is - possibly, though that's more questionable.
      - 8note 6y ago
        You are infringing if they can hear it. That cases are not pursed is incidental. I imagine it's hard to build a case against the guy blasting his car radio without a recording, and the affected people aren't particularly unhappy with it. If copyright was more like trademarks, and they had to protect it to keep it, you'd see more cases of people playing their music too loud. We'll see the same happen with streaming services as smart TVs get popular. You'll have to pay per viewer as licenses change
        jariel 6y ago
        You are not infringing on anything by playing music to yourself, and it's not a matter of cases being failed to pursued, it's straight up legal to do so in every sense. If there is some random person filming you - then they are infringing - not you.
  - riknos314 6y ago
    To perform or display a work “publicly” means . . . (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times. - Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act
    - jariel 6y ago
      Wonderful, thanks, you've just proven my case. Anyone playing the music to themselves is not playing it where 'a substantial number of persons' can hear it, nor are they projecting in such a manner. If this were the case, then anyone playing music, anywhere would be in violation, which is obviously ridiculous and no, it's not about some odd technicality of the law. It is straight up, 100% legal to play music to yourself. Given that there are millions of instances of people doing this every day, and zero cases of infringement in these scenarios, it would seem both the letter of the law, and case history quite handily demonstrate how crazy the claim is. HN threads descend into a weird distortion field when dealing with hot-button issues such as DRM, policing, NIMBYism, blockchain, privacy etc. -> Someone playing music to themselves (and not filming themselves and putting said video in public) is not infringing on anything. -> Someone filming someone else else playing music, may be infringing by virtue of the fact they are posting the content 'in public'. I don't think it's a matter of 'a difficult case to make' against a person being filed while listening to music to themselves, there is no case. The videographer, yes. Twitch / Youtubers know this as they cannot stream DRM'd music in their streams, but of course, they are directly making said music public, in which case it's a legal problem.
    - aamoyg 6y ago
      They will use the argument that their partner cop in the squad car is a "social acquaintance" or work friend, and that the music was intended for them.
      - 6y ago

Hnrobert42 6y ago

Are you arguing that playing music is illegal?

sumthinprofound 6y ago
it has a chilling effect on a citizen documenting an interaction where the other party has all the power.
rakoo 6y ago
Most music is under a copyright that explicitely prevents public diffusion without a license. Unless the music doesn't have such a limitation, or the police have a license, yes, playing music in a public fashion like that is most probably illegal
LocalH 6y ago
Are you arguing that the police should be able to play copyrighted music to circumvent the lawful dissemination of recordings of their behavior?
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Of course not.
cecilpl2 6y ago
Intent matters. In some situations, yes, playing music is illegal.
bialpio 6y ago
There are definitely cases where playing music violates the license, but I wouldn't call it illegal[1]. Playing music at some business almost certainly is not allowed by default, you'd probably need to get a permission from someone authorized to give you one (i.e. a different license). Playing music in public likely has similar rules. [1] IANAL, etc, etc.

ashtonkem 6y ago

That would be a fantastic way to make them stop. Surely qualified immunity doesn’t cover copyright violations.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mc32 6y ago

Is it a public performance when kids turn up their music and rattle their cars that I can hear it blocks away? If you’re just turning up a broadcast radio station, I don’t think that is public performance.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
Try turning up a radio station in a public area of a private business and see how quickly ASCAP reps come out of the woodwork. Now that I think about it, if we could get ASCAP to go after the kids with their rattling cars... Hmmm!
jchw 6y ago
If your phone has an FM radio, sure. However Internet radio doesn’t offer the same broadcast exemptions that traditional radio does, so you still need to deal with licensing when it comes to playing internet radio in public. Now on one hand, every day people will find this absurd. However, I am pretty sure it is not a defense that it’s not enforced evenly in all circumstances. A lot of people go 5mph over the speed limit without consequences; means nothing if you’re in court for it. However, if you are acting in bad faith, you can expect people to become more creative with their use of the law against you. The police do this all the time. And I really, really don’t think we need to argue that the police officer here just really wanted to share his taste in music while being uncooperative and has no idea what’s going on. P.S.: IANAL.
- mc32 6y ago
  Copyright holders often act in bad faith, non-copyright holders as well. We see both all the time on YouTube. Yet people continue to proceed in bad faith without repercussion. I do know lots of small businesses (pop-ups) use streamed media -so do company picnics and so on. It’s a thing. Officially I’m sure ASCAP frowns on this. On the other hand it’s a fruitless pursuit.
  - jchw 6y ago
    It’s obviously up to rights holders to decide what they would like to do. ASCAP is probably largely not interested in policing mundane and mostly personal uses of music in public places; especially a one-off event like a company luncheon, where relevant legal exemptions (at least for broadcast radio) exist. Seems like a case of not much to gain with a bit to lose. However, it might possibly become a different story in this case. Here is a pretty objectionable use of copyrighted music on a small scale. It makes copyright holders look bad because the system they lobbied for could now possibly be used to help corrupt or abusive police officers escape accountability and censor opposition. Ordinarily, a copyright holder taking action against a small scale case like this would seem like a David and Goliath situation, but in this case the “little guy” is not the person playing the music. Acting in bad faith is, of course, one thing, when you are an individual and you are acting against a large conglomerate. It doesn’t justify the action, but the optics of enforcement are not great. Just remember issues like Mike Rowe Soft for example. (P.S.: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...) This case is more complicated because the perceived wrong is not exactly the use of copyrighted music but how copyright systems are being used against a citizen exercising their rights. It remains to be seen what happens, but if this sort of behavior continues I can at least bet on musicians not being very happy to hear when their music is used for this purpose.

jariel 6y ago

It's not a public performance if a cop or anyone else is playing music for themselves. It's ridiculously obvious, otherwise, literally anything with a speaker would practically be banned. The person making a video with the music as part of the content, may be technically subjected to DRM, or rather, when they upload it they will be.

tantalor 6y ago

Just let ASCAP know, they'll get right on it. > But every now and then, a business makes the decision to ignore the legal rights of the music creators that help them make money. We only pursue lawsuits as a last resort after multiple attempts to negotiate with the licensee in question. https://www.ascap.com/help/ascap-licensing/why-ascap-licenses-bars-restaurants-music-venues https://www.ascap.com/help/ascap-licensing/why-ascap-license...

munk-a 6y ago

I think this would be a pretty terrible abuse of that law - it would also be quite non-standard since listening to music on a boombox hasn't been prosecuted AFAIK[1]. Oh as I mentioned in a different comment I think this should be illegal and might already be illegal - but pulling some rando law out of the aether to force the charge isn't a great tactic. Edit: Just to clarify, one of the other reasons I'm skeptical of using copyright law for this is because the intent doesn't match what the officer's intent would be allowing for officers to have a pretty good chance of avoiding any repercussions and because the penalties of sentencing are inappropriate. There are existing legal recourses in most instances for restricting the ability for civilians to record police incidents - if an officer is abusing copyright law to accomplish this silencing then they are likely running afoul of those laws and should be sentenced with breaking those laws since the penalties are more appropriate. 1. I'm going to guess it has happened sometime because racism, but it really shouldn't be. And thankfully a quick googling didn't turn up a litany of results.

newacct583 6y ago
> I think this would be a pretty terrible abuse of that law No more or less terrible than automatically removing the video of the officer is. It's the same law! If it's unethical to prevent an officer from playing music it's equally unethical to exploit someone else's enforcement of that law for reasons that have nothing to do with playing music.
jmj42 6y ago
Some rando law? Public performance isn't really some random law pulled out of the aether. It's one of the basic tenets of copyright and serves as the basis for the majority of copyright licensing in the U.S. Even the take-down process that the officer is looking to exploit exists because of the the rights holder's right to public performance (an Instagram video is a public performance). That it is illegal (criminal) to willfully perform a copyrighted work in public is well established law and not the least bit random.
- munk-a 6y ago
  Sorry - I mean random with regard to the intent. The intent isn't to broadcast this music to the world so that dancing can happen - it is to specifically restrict the ability for observers to record the incident. Restricting the ability for observers to record police incidents is already illegal in most circumstances. I think making sure this is attempt to circumvent the law falls under the same laws and comes with the same penalties is important.

hooande 6y ago

If you record me playing a song on my phone and post that on youtube, you're responsible for any copyright infringement, not me. There is no law against playing a song on your phone, even if you're being recorded

8note 6y ago

Nothing says they can't get a piece of work made and licensed, and have an exclusive license to share The license to share tends not to be transitive. They might be doing this improperly for now, but it's not hard to fix. The exclusive license could be found unconstitutional though?